‘Ah cannae, sir, but.’ He pawed unhappily at his insanitary frontage. ‘The buttons his came aff.’
I’d been a fool to mention it, of course. I wondered momentarily if there was time to dismiss him and get a replacement, but the first foursome was already on the tee. ‘Well, tuck the damned thing in at least, and get hold of yourself. You’re caddying for the Regimental Sergeant-Major.’
I don’t know which of them was hit hardest by this news; probably no two men in the battalion were as eager to shun each other’s company. McAuslan went in fear and horror of the majestic Mackintosh; the R.S.M., on the other hand, who had been brought up in the Guards, regarded McAuslan as a living insult to the profession of arms, and preferred to ignore his existence. Now they were in enforced partnership, so to speak. I left them to renew old acquaintance, and went to watch the first shots being exchanged on the tee.
Pirie and the Adjutant were our openers, and when Pirie hit his drive out of sight you could see the Adjutant smirking approval in a way which invited the onlookers to believe that he, too, was cast in the same grand mould. Poor sap, he didn’t seem to realise that he would shortly be scooping great lumps out of the fairway while Pirie gritted his teeth and their opponents looked embarrassed. Not that the Royals looked as though pity was their long suit; it is part of their regimental tradition to look as much like army officers as possible – the type who are to be seen in advertisements for lime juice, or whisky, or some splendid out-of-doors tobacco. They were brown, leathery, moustached upper-crust Anglo-Scots, whose well-worn wind-cheaters and waterproof trousers could have come only from Forsyth’s or Rowan’s; their wooden clubs had little covers on their heads, their brogues had fine metal spikes, and they called each other Murdoch and Doug. Nowadays they broke stocks or manage export concerns, and no doubt they still play golf extremely well.
Our second pair were Damon and Pythias, the two elderly majors, who took the tee with arthritic moans. Rivals for the same girl when they had been stationed at Kasr-el-Nil before the war, they disliked each other to the point of inseparability, and lived in a state of feud. If they could manage to totter round the eighteen holes they would at least put up a show, which was more than I expected from our third couple, the Padre and the M.O.
They were a sight to see. The M.O., eating pills and wearing gym shoes, was accompanied by a caddy festooned with impedimenta – an umbrella, binoculars, flask, sandwich case and the like. Golf, to the M.O., was not to be taken lightly. The Padre, apart from his denim trousers, was resplendent in a jersey embroidered for him by the market mammies of some St Andrew’s Kirk in West Africa, a souvenir of his missionary days. A dazzling yellow, it had his name in scarlet on the front – ‘Rev. McLeod’, it said – while on the back, in many colours, was the Church of Scotland emblem of the burning bush, with ‘Nec tamen consumebatur’ underneath. The Padre wouldn’t have parted with it for worlds; he had worn it under his battledress on D-Day, and intended to be buried in it.
The M.O., breathing heavily, drove off, which consisted of swinging like a Senlac axe-man, overbalancing, and putting up a ball which, had he been playing cricket, would have been easily caught at square leg.
′ ″Gregory, remember thy swashing blow,″ ′ quoted the Padre. ‘Man, but there’s power there, if it could be harnessed. Don’t you worry, Lachlan, I’ll see to it’, and he wandered off towards the ball to play the second shot after his opponents had driven off – which they did, very long and very straight.
Second-Lieutenant Macmillan and R.Q.M.S. Bogle were next, Macmillan scraping his drive just over the brow of the hill fifty yards in front of the tee. Then the MacNeill-Mackintosh combo took the stage, and as we walked on to the tee with the Colonels and attendant minions watching from the clubhouse verandah, I could hear the R.S.M.’s muttered instructions to the shuffling McAuslan: ’. . . those are the wooden clubs with the wooden heads; the irons have metal heads. All are numbered accordin’ to their purpose. When I require a parteecular club I shall call oot the number, and you will hand it to me, smertly and with care. Is that clear?’
God help you, you optimistic sergeant-major, I thought, and invited him to tee off – whoever fell flat on his face in front of the assembled gallery, it wasn’t going to be me. He put a respectable drive over the hill, our opponents drove immaculately, and we were off, four golfers, three caddies, and McAuslan shambling behind, watching the R.S.M. fearfully, like a captured slave behind a chariot.
Looking back, I can’t say I enjoyed that match. For one thing, I was all too conscious of what was happening in the foursomes ahead of us, and over the first nine at least it wasn’t good. From time to time they would come into view, little disheartening tableaux: the M.O. kneeling under a bush, swearing and wrestling with the cap of his flask; R.Q.M.S. Bogle trying to hit a ball which was concealed by his enormous belly, while Macmillan giggled nervously; our elderly majors beating the thick rough with their clubs and reviling each other; the Adjutant’s plaintive bleat drifting over the dunes: ‘I’m awfully sorry, Pirie, I can’t imagine what’s happened to my mid-irons today; either it’s the balance of the clubs or I’m over-swinging. What do you think, Pirie, am I over-swinging?’ And so on, while the wind blew gently over the sunlit course, ruffling the bent grass, and the distant sea glittered from its little choppy wavelets; it was a brisk, beautiful backdrop totally out of keeping with the condition of the tortured souls trudging over the links, recharging all their worst emotions and basest instincts in the pursuit of little white balls. It makes you think about civilisation, it really does.
I refer to the emotions of our own side, of course. The Royals, for all I know, were enjoying it. My own personal opponents seemed to be, at any rate. They were of the type I have already described, trim, confident men called Hamilton and Dalgliesh – or it may have been Melville and Runcieman, I can’t be sure. They played a confident, rather showy game, with big, erratic drives and carefully-considered chips and putts – which, oddly enough, didn’t give them much edge on us. Mackintosh was a steady, useful player, and I’d been worse; we weren’t discontented to reach the turn one down.
I had arranged for the pipe-sergeant to station himself at the ninth green, to give progress reports on the other games, and he was bursting with news.
‘Sir, sir, the Adjutant and Pirie iss in the lead! They’re wan hole up, sir, an’ Pirie playin’ like God’s anointed. The Adjutant iss a shambles, poor soul, and him such a charmin′ dancer, but Pirie is carryin’ the day. His drives iss like thunderbolts, and his putts is droppin’ from wherever. Oh, the elegance of it, and the poor Adjutant broke his driver at the eighth an’ him near greetin’. But they’re wan up, sir.’
‘How about the others?’
‘The majors is square, but failin′ rapidly. I doot Major Fleming’ll be to carry home; the endurance is not in him. Bogle an’ the boy – Mr Macmillan, that is – are two doon, an’ lucky at that, for Bogle’s guts is a fearful handicap. They hinder his swing, ye see, and he’s vexed. But he’s game, for a’ that, an’ wan o’ the Royals he’s playin′ against has ricked his back, so there’s hope yet.’
Ahead in one game, square in one, behind in two; it could have been worse. ‘How about the Padre and the M.O.?’
The pipe-sergeant coughed delicately. ‘Seven doon, sir, and how they contrived to save two holes, God alone knows. It’s deplorable, sir; the M.O. has been nippin’ ahint a bush after every hole for a sook at his flask, and iss as gassed as a Ne‘erday tinker. The poor Padre has gone awa’ into one o’ they wee broon things – ’
‘Into what?’
‘Into a dwalm, sir, a revaree, like a trance, ye ken. He wanders, and keeks intae bunkers, and whistles in the Gaelic. There’s nae sense in either o’ them, sir; they’re lost to ye.’ He said it much as a Marshal of France might have reported the defeat of an army to Napoleon, sad but stem. ‘And yerself, sir? One doon? What iss that to such men as yerself and the Major, see the splendid bearin’ of him! Cheer up, sir, a MacNeill never
cried barley; ye had your own boat in the Flood.’
‘That was the MacLeans, pipey,’ I said sadly. The Colonel, I was thinking, wasn’t going to like this; by the same process of logic, he wasn’t going to like his sports officer. Well, if Pirie kept his winning streak, and the two old majors lasted the distance – it was just possible that the R.S.M. and I might achieve something, who knew? But the outlook wasn’t good, and I drove off at the tenth in no high spirits.
And it was at this point that Private McAuslan began to impose his personality on the game. Knowing about McAuslan, you might think that an odd way of putting it – interfere with something, yes; wreck, frustrate or besmirch – all these things he could do. But even with his talent for disaster, he had never been what you could call a controlling influence – until the R.S.M., playing our second shot at the tenth, for once hooked, and landed us deep in tiger country.
We thrashed about in the jungle, searching, but there wasn’t a hope, and with the local five-minute rule in operation we had to forfeit the hole. Personally, if it had been our opponents, I’d have suggested they drop a new ball and forfeit a stroke, but there it was. We were two down, and the R.S.M. for once looked troubled.
‘I’m extremely sorry aboot that, sir,’ he confided to me. ‘Slack play. No excuse. I’m extremely sorry.’
I hastened to reassure him, for I guessed that perhaps to the R.S.M. this match was even more important than to the rest of us. When your life is a well-ordered, immaculate success, as his was, any failure begins to look important. Perfection was his norm; being two down was not perfection, and losing a ball was inexcusable.
Meanwhile, I was aware of voices behind us, and one of them was McAuslan’s. He had been quiet on the outward half, between terror of the R.S.M. and his own inability to distinguish one club from another – for he was illiterate, a rare but not unknown thing in the Army of those days. Perhaps his awe of Mackintosh had diminished slightly – the serf who sees his overlord grunting in a bunker gets a new slant on their relationship, I suppose. Anyway, the fearful novelty of his situation having worn off, he was beginning to take an interest, and McAuslan taking an interest was wont to be garrulous.
‘Hey, Chick,’ I heard him say, addressing my caddy. ‘Whit we no’ finishing this hole fur?’
‘We’ve loast it,’ said McClusky. ‘We loast wir ba’.’
‘So whit? Hiv we no’ got anither yin?’
‘Aye, we’ve got anither yin, but if ye lose a ba′ ye lose the hole. It’s the rules.’
A pause. Then: ‘Ah, —— the rules. It’s no’ fair. Sure it’s no fair, huh, Chick?’
‘Aw, Goad,’ said McClusky, ‘Ah’m tellin’ ye, it’s the rule, ye dope. Same’s at fitba’.’
‘Weel, Ah think it’s daft,’ said McAuslan. ‘Look, at fitba’, if a man kicks the ba’ oot the park – ’
‘All right, McAuslan, pipe down,’ I said. I knew that one of the few abstract ideas ever to settle in that neanderthal mind was a respect for justice – his sense of what was ‘no’ fair’ had once landed him in a court-martial – but this was no time for an address by McAuslan, Q.C. ‘Just keep quiet, and watch the ball. If you’d done it last time we might not have lost the hole.’ Which wasn’t strictly fair, but I was punished for it.
‘Quaiet, please,’ said one of our opponents. ‘No tocking on the tee, if you don’t mind.’ And he added. ‘Thenk-you.’
The crust of it was, he hadn’t even teed up. Suddenly I realised what had been wrong with this game so far – I’d had half my mind on the other matches, half on my own play: I hadn’t really noticed our opponents. And that’s no good. Ask Dr Grace or Casey Stengel or my Highland granny – you’ve got to notice the opposition, and abominate them. That totally unnecessary ‘Quaiet, please’ had made it easy.
Our opponents drove off, respectably, and Mackintosh, subconsciously trying to redeem his lost ball, tried a big one, instead of his usual cautious tee-shot. It soared away splendidly, but with slice written all over it; it was going to land well among the whins.
‘Keep your eye on it!’ I shouted, and McAuslan, full of zeal, bauchled masterfully across the tee, dragging his bag, his eyes staring fixedly into the blue, roaring:
‘Ah see it! Ah’ve spotted the b—! Don’t worry, sir! Ah see – ’
Unfortunately it was one of those high plateau tees, with a steep drop to whins and rough grass at the start of the fairway. McAuslan, blind to everything except the soaring ball, marched into the void and descended with a hideous clatter of clubs and body, to which presently he added flowers of invective picked up on the Ibrox terracing. He crawled out of the bushes, blaspheming bitterly, until he realised the R.S.M.’s cold eye was on him; then he rose and limped after the ball.
The opponent who had rebuked me – I think of him as Melville – chuckled.
‘Thet’s a remarkable individual,’ he said to me. ‘Wherever did you get him?′ A fair enough question, from anyone meeting McAuslan for the first time, but with just a hint of patronage, perhaps. ‘You ott to keep an aye on him, before he hurts himself,’ went on Melville jocularly. ‘Aye don’t think he’s doing anything for your partner’s peace of mind, eether.’
It might have been just loud enough for Mackintosh to hear; I may have been wrong, but I think I know gamesmanship when I hear it. Coming on top of the ‘Quaiet, please’, it just settled my hate nicely; from that moment the tension was on, and I squared up to that second shot in the deep rough, determined to hit the green if it killed me. Four shots later we were in a bunker, conceding a hole that was hopelessly lost. Three down and seven to play.
Not a nice position, and McAuslan didn’t help things. Perhaps his fall had rattled him, or more probably his brief sally into the limelight had made him more than normally self-conscious. He accidentally trod in the tee-box at the twelfth, and had to have his foot freed by force (the fact that Melville muttered something about ‘accident-prone’ did nothing for my temper). Then he upended the R.S.M.’s bag, and we had to wait while he retrieved the clubs, scrabbling like a great beast with his shirt coming out. I forced myself to be calm, and managed a fairish drive to the edge of the short twelfth green; Mackintosh chipped on well, and we halved in three.
The thirteenth was one of those weird holes by which games of golf are won and lost. Our position was fairly hopeless – three down and six – and possibly because of that we played it like champions. The R.S.M. drove straight, and for once he was long; I took my old whippy brassie with its wooden shaft, drove from my mind the nameless fear that McAuslan would have an apoplectic fit or shoot me in the back while I was in the act of swinging, and by great good luck hit one of those perfect shots away downhill. It flew, it bounced, it ran, trickling between the bunkers to lie nicely just a yard on to the green.
Melville and Co. were in dire straits. They took three and were still short of the green, and I was counting the hole won when Melville took out his number seven iron and hit the bonniest chip I ever hope to see; of course it was lucky, landing a yard short of the flag with lots of back spin, and then running straight as a die into the cup, but that’s golf. They were down in four, we were on in two, and Mackintosh had a fifteen-yard putt.
He strode ponderously on to the green, looked at the ball as though to ask its name, rank and number, and held out his hand for his putter. McAuslan rummaged fearfully, and then announced tremulously:
‘It’s no’ here, sir.’
And it wasn’t. Sulphurous question and whimpering answer finally narrowed the thing down to the point where we realised it must have fallen out when McAuslan, Daedalus-like, had tried to defy gravity at the eleventh tee. He was driven, with oaths and threats, to fetch it, and we waited in the sunlight, Melville and his friend saying nothing pointedly, until presently McAuslan hove in view again, looking like the last survivor of Fort Zinderneuf staggering home, dying of thirst. But he had the club.
‘Ah’m awfu’ sorry, sir. It must hiv fell oot.’ He wiped his sweating gr
ey nose audibly, and the R.S.M. took the putter without a word, addressed the ball briefly, and sent it across the huge waste of green dead true, undeviating, running like a pup to its dinner, plopping with a beautiful mellow sound into the tin.
(It’s a strange thing, but when I think back to that heroic, colossal putt – or to any other moment in that game, for that matter – I see in my imagination the R.S.M., not clothed in the mufti which I know he must have been wearing, but resplendent in full regimentals, white spats, kilt, dress tunic and broadsword, with a feather bonnet on top. I know he wasn’t wearing them, but he should have been.)
And as we cried our admiration, I thought to myself, we’re only two down now. And five holes to go. And I heard again that old golfing maxim: ‘Two up and five never won a match.’ Well, it might come true, given luck.
It certainly began to look like it, for while our drives and approaches were level at the fourteenth, the R.S.M. played one of his canny chips while our opponents barely found the green. Their putt was feebly short, and mine teetered round the hole, took a long look in, and finally went down. One up and four.
The fifteenth was a nightmare hole, a par-three where you played straight out to sea, hoping to find a tiny green perched above the beach, with only a ribbon of fairway through the jungle. This was where Mackintosh’s cautious driving was beyond price; I trundled on a lamentable run-up that missed the guarding bunker by a whisker, and then Melville, panicking, put his approach over the green and, presumably, into the North Sea. All square with three to play.
For the first time I was enjoying myself; I felt we had them on the run, whereupon my Presbyterian soul revolted and slapped me on the wrists, urging me to be calm. So I drove cautiously and straight, the R.S.M. put us within pitching distance, and my chip just stayed on the back of the green. Melville played the like into a bunker, they took three to get pin-high, and the R.S.M.’s putt left me nothing to do but hole a twelve-incher. For the first time we were in front. And only two holes remained.